Tuesdays at 9:20pm on ABC TV

Lebanon - Hunting Hezbollah (BBC)

Broadcast: 21/08/2007

Reporter: Darius Bazargan

Transcript

BAZARGAN: Lebanon is sliding into an abyss and my driver is taking sides.

DAWOUD INDAHOUD: The police can’t protect you in this country. The government can’t protect you in this country… too corrupt. They’re too busy stealing money. They’re not worried about the security of people here - they never did. They never will.

BAZARGAN: As things fall apart, ordinary people are buying guns and preparing for war.

DAWOUD INDAHOUD: First one he called he asked for AK-47 machine gun so we got him that. Then he called back he wants two hundred rounds. Then he called back he wants extra clips. Thirty minute later he call, he want a handgun. I guess hour later he called and ask for RPG. People are panicking.

BAZARGAN: The last thing this country needs is a civil war, but for men like Dawoud the chaos represents a business opportunity.

DAWOUD INDAHOUD: This is a Colt 45, high-powered pistol. It’s brand new in the box. So we are going to give it to that guy. People are buying guns right and left.

BAZARGAN: I’d come to Beirut to meet Hezbollah, the secretive Shia Muslim Party of God. They let me in to film this ceremony, Ashura. These people are crying for Imam Hussein, their leader, killed in battle over twelve hundred years ago. Martyrdom and sacrifice are at the heart of the Shia faith. It seemed a key to understanding Hezbollah, but if the past is a source of grief for Hezbollah supporters, the future’s looking equally bleak.

I went to visit one of their fourteen MPs. He denied their supporters were buying weapons.

NAWAR EL SAHILI: Civil war is bad to all Lebanon and to all Lebanese and in Lebanon nobody can win a war. I can assure you that in Dahiyeh and in Bekhar and even the south, nobody is buying arms because we are telling them that we do not want to go into civil war and we will never use our arms to, to kill Lebanese people. So I can assure you that nobody is buying arms.

BAZARGAN: That night I travelled across town. Whatever the leadership was saying, Dawoud maintained weapons were readily available. He promised to show me what was really going on.

DAWOUD INDAHOUD: Come look at this. That’s a nice good one right here. He’s saying that the situation is deteriorating very, very terribly fast right now.

BAZARGAN: These weapons were for sale to other Shia but rumour had it that across the country, every community was secretly preparing for war.

DAWOUD INDAHOUD: Oh man that’s what I want and like.

BAZARGAN: This group were former civil war militiamen. Nowadays, they’re on Hezbollah’s payroll.

DAWOUD INDAHOUD: Man he put a grenade in that thing, man. Man, what if it goes off by mistake? Are we all dead here? [laughs] He’s a Hezbollah guy but in his spare time, he buy some weapon and sell it to a friend of his, people who he knows, who needs weapon, he sell it to them. No problem.

BAZARGAN: I was told the price of guns had tripled since the political crisis began.

DAWOUD INDAHOUD: This is AK-47 ammo. Still brand new in boxes. This one of the best ones, the Russian made, Circle Eleven they call it. This is the best one in this room right here. This is the elite one right here.

MAN: King War!

DAWOUD INDAHOUD: Yeah this is the king right here, the king of the war! This is the Cadillac of AK-47 right here.

BAZARGAN: Why is that one so good?

DAWOUD INDAHOUD: Absolutely. This is the one that defeated the Jews in southern Lebanon, that’s right.

BAZARGAN: Dawoud was plugged straight into the city’s dark underbelly. Though not remotely religious, he was a Hezbollah supporter. Maybe he could open doors to their secret world.

DAWOUD INDAHOUD: I know lots of friends in Hezbollah, sure. They’re honest, they’re truthful, very religious, ordinary people. But they focus on one thing, there’s an enemy and we have to fight this enemy. Israel is an enemy and we have to fight them. Israel are occupying our land. We will resist.

BAZARGAN: Hezbollah started as a guerrilla group, resisting Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon. Today, it’s the country’s biggest political party but unlike the others, Hezbollah runs its own army. Backed by Iran and Syria it’s more powerful than Lebanon’s regular forces. Washington is worried.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W BUSH: In recent times it has also become clear that we face an escalating danger from Shia extremists. Many are known to take direction from the regime in Iran, which is funding an army and terrorists like Hezbollah, a group second only to al Qaeda in the American lives it has taken.

BAZARGAN: They and others blame Hezbollah for a string of bombings and kidnappings in the 1980s.

DAWOUD INDAHOUD: Oh you’re with us or you’re against us. That’s the American policy in the Middle East. Well I can assure you my people are against them. We think they are the terrorists, we think they are the murderers. We think they are the killers. So it’s okay for Israel to get funded and to get help and to get ten billion dollar a year from America. Is that, that’s good to kill us and kill our kids in Lebanon but it’s bad for us to get money from Iran to fight back. Does that make sense?

BAZARGAN: Last summer Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers. A vicious thirty-four day war followed. Israel wanted to wipe them out but Hezbollah survived; a humiliation for Israel’s supposedly all-powerful army.

The Party of God became heroes across the Muslim world. A quarter of Lebanon’s population joined the celebrations.

NASRALLAH: [Addressing crowd] How is it that a small guerrilla force could beat a huge army without divine intervention?

BAZARGAN: So what’s the secret of Hezbollah’s appeal? Their leader Hassan Nasrallah is himself a huge draw.

DAWOUD INDAHOUD: To us, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah is our icon. He’s the man we trust, he’s the man we believe because the truth in this country comes from his mouth only.

BAZARGAN: And if you liked the speech, why not buy the t-shirt?

DAWOUD INDAHOUD: This is Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s picture printed on a shirt. This lighter right here, it is made in a way that every time you push this button right here, Hassan Nasrallah’s picture comes out. It shows on whatever surface you aim. It’s so popular around here everybody’s buying it.

BAZARGAN: Hezbollah run their own satellite TV channel. Al Manar is the self-proclaimed voice of the resistance. Among the news, chat shows and children’s programs, are militant propaganda videos designed to keep people mobilised for the endless struggle against Israel. When the war started, the Israelis tried to bomb it off air. They failed. Dawoud is certainly on message but he told me he wasn’t part of Hezbollah’s military wing or even an official party member.

DAWOUD INDAHOUD: Not everyone is a soldier with Hezbollah. They are very selective who they take in their resistance. And a guy like me, I don’t think they let me in. Yes I am a Muslim, yes I am a Shia Muslim, I’m not too involved in the religion – the truth is I’m not. I might go out and have a drink or go out to a party but when it comes down to it, to take care of business, you definitely, you will see me with Hezbollah side by side - of course.

BAZARGAN: Taking care of business meaning armed and ready to defend his neighbourhood against the Israelis or anyone else, but unlike some civilians with a vast arsenal at home, Dawoud considers himself responsible.

What have you got here?

DAWOUD INDAHOUD: These are grenades right here. I keep them away from the house in case someone visit me and got some kids or something like that. I don’t want them to play with it. So, so that’s what I use in case of an emergency. Grenades always important in a street fight. Most of the people here in Dahiyeh got all these things right here you’re looking at. It’s part of life here in Dahiyeh.

BAZARGAN: The Dahiyeh is Dawoud’s neighbourhood, the southern suburbs of Beirut. Like most Shia areas it’s poor, neglected and was heavily bombed in the war. Jihad Al Binaa is Hezbollah’s construction company. They’ve pledged to completely rebuild the area and have already handed out over three hundred million dollars in cash to homeless civilians. Much of that money is believed to have come from Iran. Hezbollah also runs schools, hospitals and other projects in deprived Shia districts. It all helps to keep their supporters on side.

Don’t you feel a bit bad? Your house got bashed up because of what they did?

DAWOUD INDAHOUD: Well yes I do but they did pay money for us to relocate til they built my new house, which they will.

BAZARGAN: However, Nasrallah has also pledged to bring down the Lebanese Government.

DAWOUD INDAHOUD: Okay this is tent city. That’s where the protesters sleep and live around the clock and they will not move or remove the tents ‘til their demands be met.

BAZARGAN: Hezbollah and their allies want fresh elections accusing the US backed government of corruption and complicity with Israel. The government side say Hezbollah is a tool of Iran and Syria. The country is split down the middle and many fear foreign agendas could once again push Lebanon into a civil war.

We left Beirut behind and headed for the Shia heartlands of southern Lebanon. To really understand Hezbollah, I needed to see where the movement was born. People here experienced years of Israeli occupation and in last year’s war, thousands were maimed or killed.

DAWOUD INDAHOUD: Now we are on the way to see this lady, her son got martyred in combat during the summer, the war Hezbollah against the Israelis.

BAZARGAN: In every town and village I passed through were posters glorifying dead fighters. Down south the Party of God won the battle for hearts and minds years ago.

Ghada Haj Ali is forty years old. She encouraged her eighteen year old son Ibrahim to join Hezbollah. He was killed last summer firing Katyusha rockets into Israel. She has no regrets.

DAWOUD INDAHOUD: [Interpreting] Well what she’s saying here, yeah maybe I lost everything by western standard because they believe in material things. Material things mean nothing to us. What means to us is God blessing. My house got destroyed so what? They will rebuild it for me. The business destroyed they rebuild it for me. My son dead, no he’s not dead he’s alive. He’s alive in heaven, alive. I can hear him, I can smell him. He knows we are here right now.

Her son got martyred and that to her, it’s a victory. She have two sons. Right now they’re in college. They are not in the resistance right now but when time comes and there is a need, not only her sons will go, she will go personally too. That’s what it takes.

I can see why Hezbollah is such a tough organisation. Even the women, look at their women. They send their kids into combat. They send their sons to war with Israel. They don’t mind to be martyred by Israel. They believe they are defending the land, it’s worth dying for.

BAZARGAN: Since the war ended, over ten thousand United Nations peacekeepers have moved in to back up the Lebanese Army and act as a buffer between Hezbollah and Israel. The UN are here to prevent Hezbollah openly carrying weapons, re-arming or directly confronting Israeli troops like these patrolling the border, but this is clearly still Hezbollah territory.

DAWOUD INDAHOUD: These yellow flags are Hezbollah flags. They’ve been put up by Hezbollah fighters just to show the people, the UN, the Israeli – whoever - they are still here and they are in control.

LIAM MACDOWALL: [UN Force, Lebanon] When you consider the conflicts, the intensity and you look today then I think most observers regard it as remarkably calm. The situation is still tense but really we don’t seen armed insurgents and we don’t see any evidence of weapons coming into our area of operations.

BAZARGAN: I went out on a roadblock with an Italian patrol. While I was there, not a single vehicle was stopped or searched for guns, but hunting for Hezbollah is a tricky business. South Lebanon is supposedly riddled with their secret military bunkers. They’re notoriously difficult to find, but then suddenly we got lucky, a hidden entrance leading deep into the darkness. No one’s filmed in one of these since the war.

DAWOUD INDAHOUD: It goes all the way around under the mountain.

BAZARGAN: Despite all Israel’s surveillance technology, bunkers like this were built in total secrecy.

DAWOUD INDAHOUD: Who would ever think there’s such a thing under the mountain?

DAWOUD INDAHOUD: It looks like a bedroom…. sleep here. This is the bathroom. There’s a shower in there. And a shower, this is the shower area. This is the kitchen area. They even have a sink. These guys had it all. Electricity, hot water… running water, kitchen, sink, bathroom, shower – it’s a home away from home.

BAZARGAN: We pressed on. Our target was Bint J’Beil, Hezbollah’s so-called capital of resistance in the south, just two miles from the Israeli border. The town looks a bit like a Hezbollah theme park but one of the fiercest battles of the war took place here. And it shows.

DAWOUD INDAHOUD: After all what you see, after all this destruction, believe it or not, Israeli soldiers could not take one single inch of this city right here.

BAZARGAN: I’d come down south to meet a local commander, Haj Hussein. Hezbollah fighters never usually speak to journalists. Fearing Israeli assassination, he wouldn’t face the camera. Haj Hussein lost many fighters in the pitched battles in the south but he said war and sacrifice are just a part of life here.

DAWOUD INDAHOUD: [Interpreting] We have a belief since we were young kids we ask, what this red flower? How did red flowers come? So they be telling us this is the land of martyrs. This is the land that drink the blood of the martyrs…. flowers grow in it.

DAWOUD INDAHOUD: [Interpreting] It doesn’t matter how long the UN stays here, they will never see Hezbollah fighters. Hezbollah fighters are not for show. They use guns during combat, during the war on a mission only. It’s not for show. They depend on secrecy, mainly on secrecy.

BAZARGAN: And then he confirmed the rumours. Hezbollah was rearming and ready for war.

DAWOUD INDAHOUD: [Interpreting] What he’s saying here, yes Hezbollah and the resistance are ready more than ever and stronger than before. There is more advanced weapon right now, Hezbollah definitely bringing in weapon but nobody know where from.

BAZARGAN: Haj Hussein left. The next day he was flying off for some military training in Iran. Back in Beirut I went to meet the arms dealers once again. I heard guns were coming in from across the Middle East and Dawoud told me there was a special weapon I’d want to see.

DAWOUD INDAHOUD: [Young child holding the gun] Take a picture of the kid. Go ahead do this just to satisfy everyone.

BAZARGAN: The child was holding an M4 rifle, one of the latest models in the US military’s arsenal. So what was it doing on the streets of South Beirut?

BAZARGAN: It wasn’t sweet. I found everything about this whole scene deeply disturbing.

DAWOUD INDAHOUD: This gun for fact, for sure, came from Iraq, belonged to an American soldier. Got killed, they took his weapon, sold it to a local dealer, and that local gun dealer smuggled it to Lebanon. Fact is there’s a lot of weapon coming from Iraq to Lebanon right now, today.

BAZARGAN: The asking price for this one gun was ten thousand five hundred dollars and this had created its own gory dynamic.

DAWOUD INDAHOUD: He’s saying, some of the Iraqi groups right now, they don’t care about the political reason why the Iraqis, why the Americans are there or the situation. All they are worried about, they want the weapons. They want to take the weapon and sell it.

BAZARGAN: The gun was stamped ‘Property of the US Government’. I contacted the American military in Bagdad but citing operational security, they wouldn’t confirm the weapon’s history.

I’d been planning a trip into the mountains just north of the UN controlled zone. I’d heard Hezbollah were preparing new missile bases. If true, they could fire longer-range rockets into Israel over the heads of the peacekeepers. Across the area were blocked roads, construction equipment and evidence of widespread digging but no new buildings. Were Hezbollah making some more underground bunkers?

DAWOUD INDAHOUD: You don’t need a genius to figure this out. Look at these valleys. Big, large, wide area digged up from top to bottom. They are everywhere around this area. They are all over the place. You don’t see them, they see you.

BAZARGAN: New roads had been cut through the mountains and I wanted to take a look.

DAWOUD INDAHOUD: There’s some kind of site here. Man, they are making their way deep in the mountains right there. Oh shit!

BAZARGAN : We’d stumbled across a Hezbollah military base and Dawoud panicked.

DAWOUD INDAHOUD: Hezbollah training camp, man. Yeah.

BAZARGAN: Is it?

DAWOUD INDAHOUD: Yep. It says ‘Do not enter’. It’s not allowed to enter to anyone, Hezbollah. If you feel like to get interrogated for three days, let’s go back.

BAZARGAN: Careful of that guy coming. But it was clear I’d pushed our luck too far.

DAWOUD INDAHOUD: Put it down.

BAZARGAN: Too late. We were detained and questioned by a Hezbollah patrol. Luckily they didn’t find my tapes. They said we’d been caught in a restricted security zone. Incredibly as they let us go, they told me Hezbollah weren’t building bunkers at all. They were in fact moving into fruit production.

DAWOUD INDAHOUD: That was a close call. These guys talking, one minute he talked about strict military zone and the next minute he talk about they making a big project to grow nectarine. So phew!

BAZARGAN: Do you think they’re growing nectarines?

DAWOUD INDAHOUD: Of course they’re not growing nectarine. If they grow nectarine why they ‘kindly arrested’ us? Questioned us? Oh… let’s go this way. That way is not good. We don’t want to get stopped again.

BAZARGAN: Back in Beirut it was time to reflect. Hezbollah stand smack in the way of America’s plans for the Middle East but they say they’re ready for another war with Israel.

DAWOUD INDAHOUD: For the Israelis to win in this country or to defeat Hezbollah they have to kill all the Shia people in this country basically, because we will fight to the last drop of blood.

BAZARGAN: Whatever happens next in Lebanon, I’d come to realise the group’s real strength is neither military nor political. It’s psychological. They’ve grafted their militant ideology onto the hearts and minds of all these people, thus equipped the Party of God stand ready to fight the long war.